I remember a fruitful year. Ivan Bunin - Antonov apples. Antonov apples. I.A.Bunin

26.06.2020

...I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing - with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shade in the Indian summer - vigorous autumn”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, delicate aroma fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark a long convoy high road. The man pouring out the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but that’s the way the establishment is - the tradesman will never cut it off, but will also say:

- Get out, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red headdresses constantly flash behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless vest is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the paneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...

- Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. – These are now being translated...

And the boys in fancy white shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, all come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him “out of mercy,” he trades in jokes, jokes and even sometimes “touches” the Tula harmonica. And until the evening there is a crowd of people in the garden, you can hear laughter and talking around the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing...

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the dark, in the depths of the garden, - fairytale picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees. Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...

Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond seven-star Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again. Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

- Is it you, barchuk? – someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can’t sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

We listen for a long time and notice trembling in the ground. The trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: thundering and knocking, the train rushes... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground ...

- Where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But next to the box, sir.

You throw up a single-barreled shotgun, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot straight away. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

A black sky shooting stars draw fiery stripes. You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, overflowing with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will wake up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

II

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is bad: that means the grain is bad too... I remember a fruitful year.

At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing and the huts were smoking black, you would open the window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you couldn’t resist - you ordered to quickly saddle the horse, and you yourself ran wash at the pond. Almost all of the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy, and seemingly heavy. It instantly drives away the night's laziness, and, having washed and had breakfast in the common room with the workers, hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you enjoy feeling the slippery leather of the saddle under you as you ride through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal feasts, and at this time the people are tidy and happy, the appearance of the village is not at all the same as at other times. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese cackle loudly and loudly on the river in the morning, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki have been famous for their “wealth” since time immemorial, since the time of our grandfather. The old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier. All you ever heard was: “Yes,” Agafya waved off her eighty-three year old!” - or conversations like this:

Autumn

I. Sokolov-Mikitov

The chirping swallows have long since flown south, and even earlier, as if on cue, the swift swifts disappeared.

IN autumn days The boys heard the passing cranes crowing in the sky as they said goodbye to their dear homeland. They looked after them for a long time with some special feeling, as if the cranes were taking summer with them.

Quietly talking, the geese flew to the warm south...

Getting ready for cold winter People. The rye and wheat were mowed long ago. We prepared feed for the livestock. The last apples are being picked from the orchards. They dug up potatoes, beets, and carrots and put them away for the winter.

The animals are also preparing for winter. The nimble squirrel accumulated nuts in the hollow and dried selected mushrooms. Little voles brought grains into the holes and prepared fragrant soft hay.

In late autumn, a hardworking hedgehog builds its winter lair. He dragged a whole heap of dry leaves under an old stump. You will sleep peacefully all winter under a warm blanket.

The autumn sun warms less and less often, more and more sparingly.

Soon, soon the first frosts will begin.

Until spring, Mother Earth will freeze. Everyone took from her everything she could give.

Autumn

A fun summer has flown by. So autumn has come. It's time to harvest the harvest. Vanya and Fedya are digging potatoes. Vasya collects beets and carrots, and Fenya collects beans. There are a lot of plums in the garden. Vera and Felix collect fruit and send it to the school cafeteria. There everyone is treated to ripe and tasty fruits.

In the forest

Grisha and Kolya went into the forest. They picked mushrooms and berries. They put mushrooms in a basket and berries in a basket. Suddenly there was thunder. The sun has disappeared. Clouds appeared all around. The wind bent the trees towards the ground. I went heavy rain. The boys went to the forester's house. Soon the forest became quiet. Rain stopped. The sun came out. Grisha and Kolya went home with mushrooms and berries.

Mushrooms

The guys went into the forest to pick mushrooms. Roma found a beautiful boletus under a birch tree. Valya saw a small oil can under the pine tree. Seryozha spotted a huge boletus in the grass. In the grove they collected full baskets different mushrooms. The guys returned home happy and happy.

Forest in autumn

I. Sokolov-Mikitov

The Russian forest is beautiful and sad in the early autumn days. Bright spots of red-yellow maples and aspens stand out against the golden background of yellowed foliage. Slowly circling in the air, light, weightless yellow leaves fall and fall from the birches. Thin silver threads of light cobwebs stretched from tree to tree. Late autumn flowers are still blooming.

The air is transparent and clean. The water in forest ditches and streams is clear. Every pebble at the bottom is visible.

Quiet in the autumn forest. Only fallen leaves rustle underfoot. Sometimes a hazel grouse whistles subtly. And this makes the silence even more audible.

It's easy to breathe in the autumn forest. And I don’t want to leave it for a long time. It’s good in the autumn flowery forest... But something sad, farewell is heard and seen in it.

Nature in autumn

The mysterious princess Autumn will take tired nature into her hands, dress her in golden outfits and drench her in long rains. Autumn will calm the breathless earth, blow away the last leaves with the wind and lay it in the cradle of a long winter sleep.

Autumn day in a birch grove

I was sitting in a birch grove in the fall, around mid-September. From the very morning there was a light rain, replaced at times by warm sunshine; the weather was changeable. The sky was either covered with loose white clouds, then suddenly cleared in places for a moment, and then, from behind the parted clouds, azure appeared, clear and gentle...

I sat and looked around and listened. The leaves rustled slightly above my head; by their noise alone one could find out what time of year it was then. It was not the cheerful, laughing trembling of spring, not the soft whispering, not the long chatter of summer, not the timid and cold babbling of late autumn, but barely audible, drowsy chatter. A weak wind pulled slightly over the tops. The interior of the grove, wet from the rain, was constantly changing, depending on whether the sun was shining or covered with clouds; She then lit up all over, as if suddenly everything in her was smiling... then suddenly everything around her turned slightly blue again: the bright colors instantly faded... and stealthily, slyly, the smallest rain began to fall and whisper through the forest.

The foliage on the birches was still almost all green, although noticeably paler; only here and there stood one young girl, all red or all gold...

Not a single bird was heard: everyone took refuge and fell silent; only occasionally did the mocking voice of a tit ring like a steel bell.

An autumn, clear, slightly cold, frosty day in the morning, when a birch tree, like a fairy-tale tree, all golden, is beautifully drawn in the pale blue sky, when the low sun no longer warms, but shines brighter than a summer one, a small aspen grove sparkles through and through, as if it’s fun and easy to stand naked, the frost is still white at the bottom of the valleys, and the fresh wind quietly stirs and drives away the fallen, warped leaves - when blue waves joyfully rush along the river, quietly lifting up the scattered geese and ducks; in the distance the mill knocks, half-hidden by willows, and, dappling the light air, pigeons quickly circle above it...

By the beginning of September the weather suddenly changed dramatically and completely unexpectedly. Quiet and cloudless days immediately arrived, so clear, sunny and warm, which were not even in July. On the dried, compressed fields, on their prickly yellow stubble, an autumn cobweb glistened with a mica sheen. The calmed trees silently and obediently dropped their yellow leaves.

Late fall

Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich

Late autumn is coming. The fruit has become heavy; he breaks down and falls to the ground. He dies, but the seed lives in him, and in this seed lives in “possibility” the entire future plant, with its future luxurious foliage and its new fruit. The seed will fall to the ground; and the cold sun is already rising low above the earth, a cold wind is running, cold clouds are rushing... Not only passion, but life itself freezes quietly, imperceptibly... The earth is increasingly emerging from under the greenery with its blackness, cold tones dominate in the sky ... And then the day comes when millions of snowflakes fall on this resigned and quiet, as if widowed earth, and it all becomes smooth, monochromatic and white... White color- this is the color of cold snow, the color of the highest clouds that float in the unattainable cold of the heavenly heights, - the color of majestic and barren mountain peaks...

Antonov apples

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

I remember an early fine autumn. August had warm rains at the right time, in the middle of the month. I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so pure, it’s as if there is none at all. There is a strong smell of apples everywhere.

By night it becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near a hut, surrounded by darkness...

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped: that means the grain crop is cropped... I remember a fruitful year.

At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing, you would open a window into a cool garden filled with a purple fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there... You would run to the pond to wash your face. Almost all the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches show through in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy, and seemingly heavy. It instantly drives away nighttime laziness.

You enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others.

Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floor have been empty, the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, and the rains watered them from morning to night.

The liquid shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds. blue sky, and from behind these clouds the ridges of snowy mountains-clouds slowly floated out, the window into the blue sky closed, and the garden became deserted and boring, and the rain began to fall again... at first quietly, carefully, then more and more thickly and finally turned into downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night was coming...

From such a scolding the garden emerged completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow quiet and resigned. But how beautiful it was when clear weather came again, clear and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees until the first frost. The black garden will shine through the cold turquoise sky and dutifully wait for winter, warming itself in the sunshine. And the fields are already turning sharply black with arable land and brightly green with bushy winter crops...

You wake up and lie in bed for a long time. There is silence throughout the whole house. Ahead lies a whole day of peace in the already silent, winter-like estate. Slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple in the wet leaves, and for some reason it will seem unusually tasty, not at all like the others.

Dictionary native nature

It is impossible to list the signs of all seasons. Therefore, I skip summer and move on to autumn, to its first days, when “September” already begins.

The earth is withering, but the “Indian summer” is still ahead with its last bright, but already cold, like the shine of mica, radiance of the sun. From the thick blue of the sky, washed with cool air. With a flying web (“the yarn of the Virgin Mary,” as earnest old women still call it in some places) and a fallen, withered leaf covering the empty waters. Birch groves standing like crowds of beautiful girls in shawls embroidered with gold leaf. “A sad time is a charm of the eyes.”

Then - bad weather, heavy rains, the icy north wind “Siverko”, plowing through the leaden waters, cold, coldness, pitch-black nights, icy dew, dark dawns.

So everything goes on until the first frost grabs and binds the earth, the first powder falls and the first path is established. And there is already winter with blizzards, blizzards, drifting snow, snowfall, gray frosts, poles in the fields, creaking cuts on the sledges, a gray, snowy sky...

Often in the fall I closely watched the falling leaves in order to catch that imperceptible split second when the leaf separates from the branch and begins to fall to the ground, but for a long time I was not able to do this. I've read in old books about the sound of falling leaves, but I've never heard that sound. If the leaves rustled, it was only on the ground, under a person’s feet. The rustling of leaves in the air seemed as implausible to me as stories about hearing grass sprouting in the spring.

I was, of course, wrong. Time was needed so that the ear, dulled by the grinding of city streets, could rest and catch the very pure and precise sounds of the autumn land.

One late evening I went out into the garden to the well. I placed a dim kerosene bat lantern on the frame and took out some water. Leaves were floating in the bucket. They were everywhere. There was no way to get rid of them anywhere. Brown bread from the bakery was brought with wet leaves stuck to it. The wind threw handfuls of leaves on the table, on the bed, on the floor. on books, and it was difficult to groom along the paths of tallow: you had to walk on the leaves, as if through deep snow. We found leaves in the pockets of our raincoats, in our caps, in our hair - everywhere. We slept on them and were thoroughly saturated with their smell.

There are autumn nights, deaf and silent, when there is no wind over the black wooded edge and only the watchman's beater can be heard from the village outskirts.

It was such a night. The lantern illuminated the well, the old maple under the fence and the nasturtium bush tousled by the wind in the yellowed flowerbed.

I looked at the maple and saw how a red leaf carefully and slowly separated from the branch, shuddered, stopped in the air for an instant and began to fall obliquely at my feet, slightly rustling and swaying. For the first time I heard the rustling of a falling leaf - an unclear sound, like a child’s whisper.

My house

Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich

It’s especially good in the gazebo on quiet autumn nights, when the slow, sheer rain is making a low noise in the sala.

The cool air barely moves the candle tongue. Corner shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. A moth, looking like a lump of gray raw silk, lands on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page. It smells like rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.

At dawn I wake up. The fog rustles in the garden. Leaves are falling in the fog. I pull a bucket of water out of the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd’s horn - he is still singing far away, right at the outskirts.

It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. I'm sailing in the fog. The East is turning pink. The smell of smoke from rural stoves can no longer be heard. All that remains is the silence of the water and the thickets of centuries-old willows.

Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lost in this huge world of fragrant foliage, grass, autumn withering, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this confusion as happiness.

What types of rains are there?

Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich

(Excerpt from the story “Golden Rose”)

The sun sets in the clouds, smoke falls to the ground, swallows fly low, roosters crow endlessly in the courtyards, clouds stretch across the sky in long, misty strands - all these are signs of rain. And shortly before the rain, although the clouds have not yet gathered, a gentle breath of moisture can be heard. It must be brought from where the rains have already fallen.

But now the first drops begin to drip. People's word“speckle” well conveys the appearance of rain, when even rare drops leave dark specks on dusty paths and roofs.

Then the rain disperses. It is then that the wonderful cool smell of earth, moistened for the first time with the squeeze, appears. It doesn't last long. It is replaced by the smell of wet grass, especially nettle.

It is characteristic that, no matter what kind of rain it will be, as soon as it begins, it is always called very affectionately - rain. “The rain is gathering”, “the rain is falling”, “the rain is washing the grass”...

How, for example, does spore rain differ from mushroom rain?

The word “sporey” means fast, quick. The stinging rain is pouring vertically and heavily. He always approaches with a rushing noise.

The spore rain on the river is especially good. Each drop of it knocks out a round depression in the water, a small water bowl, jumps up, falls again, and is still visible at the bottom of this water bowl for a few moments before disappearing. The drop shines and looks like pearls.

At the same time, there is a glass ringing all over the river. By the height of this ringing you can guess whether the rain is gaining strength or subsiding.

And a fine mushroom rain sleepily falls from the low clouds. The puddles from this rain are always warm. He doesn’t ring, but whispers something of his own, soporific, and barely noticeably fidgets in the bushes, as if touching first one leaf and then another with a soft paw.

Forest humus and moss absorb this rain slowly and thoroughly. Therefore, after it, mushrooms begin to grow wildly - sticky boletus, yellow chanterelles, boletus mushrooms, ruddy saffron milk caps, honey mushrooms and countless toadstools.

During mushroom rains, the air smells of smoke and the cunning and cautious fish - the roach - takes it well.

People say about blind rain falling in the sun: “The princess is crying.” The sparkling sunny drops of this rain look like large tears. And who should cry such shining tears of grief or joy if not fairytale beauty princess!

You can spend a long time following the play of light during rain, the variety of sounds - from a measured knock on a plank roof and a liquid ringing in a drainpipe to a continuous, intense roar when the rain pours, as they say, like a wall.

All this is only an insignificant part of what can be said about rain...

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

Antonov apples

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

Antonov apples

Come on, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless vest is velvet, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...

Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - These are also being translated now...

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fairy-tale picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate...

Is that you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

Me: Are you still awake, Nikolai?

We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

We listen for a long time and discern trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes by... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground...

Where is your gun, Nikolai?

But next to the box, sir.

Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

"Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year." Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped, which means that the grain is cropped... I remember a fruitful year.

“...I remember an early fine autumn. August was with warm rains... Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, as if there is none at all... And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see the road to a large hut, strewn with straw.” Bourgeois gardeners live here and have rented the garden. “On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red headdresses constantly flash behind the trees.” Everyone comes for apples. Boys in white fluffy shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. There are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. ““Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped: that means the grain crop is cropped... I remember a fruitful year. At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing and the huts were smoking black, you would open the window into a cool garden filled with a purple fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there... and you would run to the pond to wash your face. Almost all of the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and seemed heavy.” The author describes the village and its inhabitants, buildings, and way of life. We read further: “I didn’t know or see serfdom, but I remember feeling it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You drive into the yard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small... What stands out in size, or better yet, in length, is only the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peek out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, looking like Don Quixote. All of them, when you enter the yard, pull themselves up and bow low and low... You enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossom, which has been lying on the windows since June. .. In all the rooms - in the servant's room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is because the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass of the windows is colored: blue and purple. Everywhere there is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that the chairs, tables with inlays and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames have never been moved. And then a cough is heard: the aunt comes out. It is small, but, like everything around, it is durable. She has a large Persian shawl draped over her shoulders...” “Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floor have been empty, the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, and the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the flickering golden light of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became clean and clear, and the sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds, and from behind these clouds the ridges of snowy mountains-clouds slowly floated out... A long, anxious night was coming... From such a scolding, the garden emerged almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow quiet, resigned. But how beautiful it was when clear weather came again, clear and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will hang on the trees until the first winter. The black garden will shine through the cold turquoise sky and obediently wait for winter, warming itself in the sun’s shine.” “When I happened to oversleep the hunt, the rest was especially pleasant. You wake up and lie in bed for a long time... Slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find in the wet leaves an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple, and for some reason it seems unusually tasty, not at all like the others. Then you’ll get down to reading books—grandfather’s books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, similar to church breviaries, smell wonderful with their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sour mold, old perfume... The notes in their margins are also good, large and with round soft strokes quill pen...And you will involuntarily get carried away by the book itself. This is “The Noble Philosopher”... a story about how “a noble philosopher, having the time and the ability to reason about what the human mind can ascend to, once received the desire to compose a plan of light in the vast area of his village...” “ The smell of Antonov apples disappears from landowners' estates. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then. The old people in Vyselki died, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseniy Semenych shot himself... The kingdom of the small estates, impoverished to the point of beggary, is coming. But this miserable small-scale life is also good! So I see myself again in the village, deep in the ass. The days are bluish and cloudy. In the morning I get into the saddle and with one dog, a gun and a horn, I ride off into the field. The wind rings and hums in the barrel of a gun, the wind blows strongly towards, sometimes with dry snow. All day long I wander across the empty plains... Hungry and frozen, I return to the estate at dusk, and my soul becomes so warm and joyful when the lights of the Settlement flash and the smell of smoke and housing draws me out of the estate... Sometimes someone will come by a small-scale neighbor and will take me away for a long time... The life of a small-scale estate is good too!”

I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing, with rains right at the right time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shade in the Indian summer - autumn is vigorous”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on a night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark a long convoy along the high road. The man pouring the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the establishment - the tradesman will never cut it off, but will also say:
- Go ahead, eat your fill, there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.
And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...
- Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - These are now being translated...
And the boys in fancy white shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, all come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him “out of mercy,” he trades in jokes, jokes and even sometimes “touches” the Tula harmonica. And until the evening there is a crowd of people in the garden, you can hear laughter and talking around the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing...
By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...
Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again.
Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.
- Is it you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.
- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?
- We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...
We listen for a long time and discern trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes by... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground...
- Where is your gun, Nikolai?
- But next to the box, sir.
You throw up a single-barreled shotgun, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot straight away. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air.
- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

And the black sky is lined with fiery stripes of falling stars. You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, overflowing with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will wake up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

I.A. Bunin

Antonov apples

(excerpt)

...I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing, with rains right at the right time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shady stuff in the Indian summer - autumn is vigorous”...

I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark a long convoy along the high road. And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs.

...By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn.

It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall all over the tree, then clearly

two legs will be drawn - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...

Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again.

Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

- Is it you, barchuk? – someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

-We can’t sleep. And it must be too late? Look, it seems

passenger train is coming...

We listen for a long time and distinguish trembling in the ground, trembling

turns into noise, grows, and now, as if just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: thundering and knocking, the train rushes... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground...

- Where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But next to the box, sir.

Throw a single-barreled shotgun, heavy as a crowbar, into the air and

you'll shoot. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

And the black sky is lined with fiery stripes of falling stars.

You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, overflowing with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will wake up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if Antonovka is bad: that means the grain is bad too...

I remember a fruitful year.

At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing and the huts were smoking black, you would open the window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you couldn’t resist - you ordered to quickly saddle the horse, and you yourself ran wash at the pond. Almost all of the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy, and seemingly heavy. It instantly drives away the night's laziness, and, having washed and had breakfast in the common room with the workers, hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you enjoy feeling the slippery leather of the saddle under you as you ride through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal feasts, and at this time the people are tidy and happy, the appearance of the village is not at all the same as at other times. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese cackle loudly and loudly on the river in the morning, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki have been famous for their “wealth” since time immemorial, since the time of our grandfather. Old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier

The courtyards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich men - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families they kept bees, were proud of their gray-iron-colored bull stallion, and kept their estates in order. On the threshing floors there were dark, thick hemp trees; there were barns and barns covered with hair; in the bunks and barns there were iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, type-setting harnesses, and measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sleds. And I remember that sometimes it seemed extremely tempting to me to be a man.

G. Myasoedov. Mowers. Time of suffering

When you used to drive through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it would be to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in brooms, and on a holiday to rise with the sun, under the thick and musical blast from the village, wash yourself near a barrel and put on a clean pair of clothes. a shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, we add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire, and a trip to mass, and then lunch with his bearded father-in-law, lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash, then one could only wish for more impossible!

http://www.artlib.ru/objects/gallery

Even in my memory, very recently, the lifestyle of the average nobleman had much in common with the lifestyle of a wealthy peasant in its homeliness and rural, old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Aunt Anna Gerasimovna, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. By the time you get to this estate, it’s already completely impoverished. With dogs in packs you have to walk at a pace, and you don’t want to rush - it’s so fun in an open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat, you can see far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun sparkles from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and shines like rails. Fresh, lush green winter crops are scattered around in wide schools. A hawk will fly up from somewhere in the transparent air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. Falcons sit on them - completely black icons on music paper.

Ozerki. House-Museum of I.A. Bunina

My aunt’s garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, turtle doves and apples, and the house for its roof. He stood at the head of the courtyard, right next to the garden - the branches of the linden trees hugged him - he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not last a century - so thoroughly did he look from under his unusually high and thick thatched roof, blackened and hardened by time. Its front facade always seemed to me to be alive: as if an old face was looking out from under a huge hat with sockets of eyes - windows with mother-of-pearl glass from the rain and sun. And on the sides of these eyes there were porches - two old large porches with columns. Well-fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained from roof to roof... And the guest felt comfortable in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!

You will enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossoms, which have been lying on the windows since June... In all the rooms - in the servant's room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is why that the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass windows are colored: blue and purple.

Interior

Everywhere there is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that the chairs, tables with inlays and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames have never been moved.

And then a cough is heard: the aunt comes out. It is small, but, like everything around, it is durable. She has a large Persian shawl draped over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but affably, and now, amid endless conversations about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, “duli”, apples, Antonovsky, “Bel-Barynya”, borovinka, “plodovitka” - and then an amazing lunch : all through and through pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass - strong and sweet-sweet... The windows to the garden are raised, and the cheerful autumn coolness blows from there.

The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the landowners' estates. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then...

The great writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin wrote his work “Antonov Apples” quickly, in just a few months. But he did not complete the work on the story, because he turned to his story again and again, changing the text. Each edition of this story had already changed and edited text. And this could easily be explained by the fact that the writer’s impressions were so vivid and deep that he wanted to show all this to his reader.

But a story like “Antonov Apples,” where there is no plot development, and the basis of the content is Bunin’s impressions and memories, is difficult to analyze. It is difficult to capture the emotions of a person who lives in the past. But Ivan Alekseevich manages to accurately convey sounds and colors, showing his unusual literary skill. Reading the story “Antonov Apples” you can understand what feelings and emotions the writer experienced. This is both pain and sadness that all this is left behind, as well as joy and tenderness for the ways of deep antiquity.

Bunin uses bright colors to describe colors, for example, black-lilac, gray-iron. Bunin’s descriptions are so deep that he even notices how the shadow of many objects falls. For example, from the flames in the garden in the evening he sees black silhouettes, which he compares with giants. By the way, there are a huge number of metaphors in the text. It is worth paying attention to the sundresses that girls wear at fairs: “sundresses that smell like paint.” Even the smell of Bunin's paint does not cause irritation, and this is another memory. And what words does he choose when he conveys his feelings from water! The writer’s character is not simply cold or transparent, but Ivan Alekseevich uses the following description of it: icy, heavy.

What is happening in the narrator’s soul, how strong and deep his experiences are, can be understood if we analyze those details in the work “Antonov Apples”, where he gives a detailed description of them. There is also in the story main character- barchuk, but his story is never revealed to the reader.

At the very beginning of his work, the writer uses one of the means of artistic expressiveness of speech. The gradation lies in the fact that the author very often repeats the word “remember,” which allows you to create a feeling of how carefully the writer treats his memories and is afraid of forgetting something.

The second chapter contains not only a description of a wonderful autumn, which is usually mysterious and even fabulous in villages. But the work tells about old women who were living out their lives and preparing to accept death. To do this, they put on a shroud, which was wonderfully painted and starched so that it stood like a stone on the body of the old women. The writer also recalled that, having prepared for death, such old women dragged gravestones into the yard, which now stood awaiting the death of their mistress.

The writer’s memories take the reader in the second part to another estate, which belonged to Ivan Alekseevich’s cousin. Anna Gerasimovna lived on her own, so she was always happy to visit her old estate. The road to this estate still appears before the narrator’s eyes: a lush and spacious blue sky, the well-trodden and well-trodden road seems to the writer the most expensive and so dear. Bunin’s description of both the road and the estate itself evokes a great feeling of regret that all this is a thing of the distant past.

The description of the telegraph poles that the narrator encountered on the way to his aunt is sad and sad. They were like silver strings, and the birds sitting on them seemed to the writer like musical notes. But even here, on the aunt’s estate, the narrator again remembers the smell of Antonov apples.

The third part takes the reader into deep autumn, when after cold and prolonged rains, the sun finally begins to appear. And again the estate of another landowner - Arseny Semenovich, who was a great lover of hunting. And again one can see the author’s sadness and regret that the spirit of the landowner, who honored both his roots and the entire Russian culture, has now faded away. But now that former way of life has been lost, and it is now impossible to return the former noble way of life in Rus'.

In the fourth chapter of the story “Antonov Apples,” Bunin sums it up by saying that there is no more than the smell of childhood that was associated with life and everyday life landed nobility, the smell of Antonov apples disappeared. And it is impossible to see either those old people, or the glorious landowners, or those glorious times. And the last lines of the story “I covered the road with white snow” lead the reader to the fact that it is no longer impossible to return the old Russia, its former life.

The story “Antonov Apples” is a kind of ode, enthusiastic, but sad and sad, imbued with love, which is dedicated to Russian nature, life in the villages and the patriarchal way of life that existed in Rus'. The story is small in volume, but quite a lot is conveyed in it. Bunin has pleasant memories of that time; they are filled with spirituality and poetry.

“Antonov Apples” is Bunin’s hymn to his homeland, which, although it remained in the past, far from him, still remained forever in the memory of Ivan Alekseevich, and was for him like the best and purest time, the time of his spiritual development.

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

Antonov apples

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

Antonov apples

Come on, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless vest is velvet, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...

Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - These are also being translated now...

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fairy-tale picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the very gate...

Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again.

Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

Is that you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

Me: Are you still awake, Nikolai?

We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

Where is your gun, Nikolai?

But next to the box, sir.

Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

"Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year." Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped, which means that the grain is cropped... I remember a fruitful year.

The teacher pays attention to Ivan Bunin’s story “Antonov Apples,” in which the writer describes the entire life of the Russian middle and upper classes in the countryside. In the story “Antonov Apples,” the plot as a whole represents a description of the main character’s memories, and they are different in each of the four chapters of the text. Thus, the first part describes the trade of the townspeople with the famous Antonov apples in August, the second - autumn, noble house, where the main character and his relatives lived. The third describes hunting, as well as the onset of winter. The fourth describes the November day of small-scale people.
At the end of the lesson, the teacher emphasizes that Ivan Bunin’s story “Antonov Apples” is an expression of deep and poetic love for his country.

Topic: Russian literature late XIX– beginning of the 20th century.

Lesson:Ivan Bunin. "Antonov Apples", "Village"

A characteristic feature of I. Bunin’s early prose work is the presence of a lyrical plot, in which it is not events that are important, but impressions, associations, and a special elegiac mood. It is known that I.A. Bunin began his career in literature as a poet and, as a rule, did not clearly distinguish between poetic and prose creativity, often used in prose individual images taken from his own lyrics. In this regard, his work clearly reflects such a characteristic phenomenon of 20th-century literature as poetry.

The story “Antonov Apples” as a whole can be considered as a prose poem. A brief and incredibly poetic time is depicted - Indian summer, when elegiac reflections naturally form in the soul. For more details landscape sketch one can guess the poetic soul of the author, a subtle, educated, deeply loving life native nature. close to him folk wisdom, since he often refers to signs: “Autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.”

The motive of death enhances the experiences of the lyrical hero. However, the wonderful moment remains in the memory.

Beauty and death, love and separation - here eternal themes, personal and enlightened expression in poetry.

The genre has been defined in various ways, and the running theme is the passage of time.

The story begins and ends with an ellipsis. This means that nothing begins and nothing ends in it. Human life is finite, but life is infinite.

The story is divided into 4 fragments, each of them has its own theme and intonation.

Few people can know and love nature as well as Bunin can. Thanks to this love, the poet looks vigilantly and far, and his colorful and auditory impressions are rich. His world is primarily a world of visual and auditory impressions and experiences associated with them.

Treasured alleys of noble nests. These words from K. Balmont’s poem “In Memory of Turgenev” perfectly convey the mood of the story “Antonov Apples.” Apparently, it is no coincidence that on the pages of one of his first stories, the very date of creation of which is extremely symbolic, I.A. Bunin recreates the world of a Russian estate. It is in it, according to the writer, that the past and the present are united, the history of the culture of the golden age and its fate at the turn of the century, family traditions noble family and individual human life. Sadness about the noble nests fading into the past is the leitmotif not only of this story, but also of numerous poems, such as “The high white hall, where the black piano is...”, “Into the living room through the garden and dusty curtains...”, “On a quiet night the late moon came out... " However, the leitmotif of decline and destruction is overcome in them “not by the theme of liberation from the past, but on the contrary, by the poeticization of this past, living in the memory of culture... Bunin’s poem about the estate is characterized by picturesqueness and at the same time inspired emotionality, sublimity and poetic feeling. The estate becomes for the lyrical hero an integral part of his individual life and at the same time a symbol of the homeland, the roots of the family” (L. Ershov).

The first thing you notice when reading a story is the absence of a plot in the usual sense, i.e. lack of event dynamics. The very first words of the work “...I remember an early fine autumn” immerse us in the world of the hero’s memories, and the plot begins to develop as a chain of sensations associated with them. The smell of Antonov apples, which awakens a variety of associations in the narrator’s soul. The smells change - life itself changes, but the change in its way of life is conveyed by the writer as a change in the hero’s personal feelings, a change in his worldview. The whole earth is oozing with fruits. But we understand that this is universal happiness. This is a child's perception of happiness.

Let us pay attention to the pictures of autumn given in different chapters through the perception of the hero.

The first chapter deals with strong emotion: “In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a hut is burning with a crimson flame, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across apple trees." How good it is to live in the world!

In the second chapter, the tone is already consistent, we are talking about the people who convey the way of life, the epic mood: “Almost all the small foliage has flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the lozins became clear, icy and as if heavy... When you used to drive through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it is to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in brooms, and on a holiday to rise with the sun...”

Rice. 2. Illustration for the story “Antonov Apples” by I. A. Bunin ()

Time goes by in circles as if nothing is happening. The author conveys in his own words the thoughts of the characters.

Bunin formulates the idea of the epic. Thoughts about the village. The idyllic intonation is affirmed, but the author, for contrast, mentions serfdom.

The third chapter deals with the heyday of local culture. Late fall. Pictures of nature “The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, the rains watered them from morning to night... the wind did not let up. It disturbed the garden, tore up the stream of human smoke continuously flowing from the chimney, and again drove up the ominous strands of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, they clouded the sun. Its shine faded, the window into the blue sky closed, and the garden became deserted and boring, and rain began to fall more and more often...”

And in the fourth chapter: “The days are bluish, cloudy... All day long I wander through the empty plains...”.. Lonely wandering through the already winter forest. Quiet sadness.

The description of autumn is conveyed by the narrator through its flower and sound perception. Autumn landscape It changes from chapter to chapter: the colors fade, it becomes smaller sunlight. Essentially, the story describes the autumn of not one year, but several, and this is constantly emphasized in the text: “I remember a fruitful year”; “These were so recent, and yet it seems that almost a whole century has passed since then.”

Pictures - memories appear in the mind of the narrator and create the illusion of action. However, the narrator himself seems to be in different age guises: from chapter to chapter he seems to become older and looks at the world either through the eyes of a child, a teenager and a young man, or even through the eyes of a person who has crossed adulthood. But time seems to have no power over him, and it flows in the story in a very strange way. On the one hand, it seems to be moving forward, but in the memories the narrator always turns back. All events occurring in the past are perceived and experienced by him as momentary, developing before his eyes. This relativity of time is one of the features of Bunin's traits.

I.A. Bunin is incredibly fond of national color. With what care, for example, he describes the festive spirit of the garden fair. His creation of figures of people from among the people is amazing high degree individualization. Just look at one important thing, like a Kholmogory cow, a young elder, or a burry, nimble half-idiot playing the Tula harmonica.

For a detailed recreation of the atmosphere of the early nice autumn in the apple orchard I.A. Bunin makes extensive use of entire rows artistic definitions: “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves...” In order to more fully, more clearly reflect the surrounding atmosphere, to convey every sound (the creaking of carts, the clucking of blackbirds, the crackling of apples being eaten by men) and the aroma (the smell of Antonov apples, honey and autumn freshness).

The smell of apples is a recurring detail in the story. I.A. Bunin describes a garden with Antonov apples in different time days. At the same time, the evening landscape turns out to be no poorer than the morning one. It is decorated with the diamond constellation Stozhar, the Milky Way, whitening overhead, and falling stars.

Local libraries preserve the memory of ancestors.

The central theme of the story is the theme of the ruin of noble nests. The author writes with pain that the smell of Antonov apples is disappearing, and the way of life that has developed over centuries is falling apart. Admiring the past and the passing brings an elegiac tone to the work. Bunin emphasizes individual details social aspect relationships between people. This is evidenced by the vocabulary (“philistine”, “barchuk”). Despite the elegiac tone, the story also contains optimistic notes. “How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!” - emphasizes I.A. Bunin. The story reveals the idealization of the image of the people characteristic of the writer. It is especially close to the author on holidays, when everyone is tidy and happy. “The old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier. All you heard was: “Yes,” Agafya waved off her eighty-three year old!” - this is how I.A conveys through dialogues. Bunin his admiration for the way of simple village life. The author poetizes everyday values: work on the land, a clean shirt and lunch with hot lamb on wooden plates.

Social and class differences do not escape the author's attention either. It is no coincidence that old Pankrat stands stretched out in front of the master, smiling guiltily and meekly. It is in this work that I.A. expresses. Bunin had an important idea for him that the structure of the average noble life was close to that of the peasants. The author-narrator directly admits that he did not know or see serfdom, but felt it, remembering how former servants bowed to their masters.

The social aspect is also emphasized in the interior of the house. Footman's room, people's room, hall, living room - all these names indicate the author's understanding of class contradictions in society. However, at the same time, the story also contains admiration for the refined life of the nobility. The writer, for example, emphasizes the arctocratically beautiful heads in ancient hairstyles, lowering their heads from portraits long eyelashes to sad and tender eyes.

Thus, the story of I.A. Bunin’s “Antonov Apples” is dear to the reader because it embodies the beauty of native nature, pictures of Russian life and teaches to love Russia as much as the Russian writer, stunning with the depth of lyrical expression of patriotic experience, loved it.

Additionally

The idea for the story “The Village” arose from Bunin’s thoughts about the events of 1905 and how it affected life in the Russian village. This led to the fact that the lyrical and master of subtle and tender poetry, Bunin, had to depict what was happening in the village in a strict style and in a purely objective manner.

Only in this way could he reach the callous and seemingly unbeatable hearts of people who ignored what thousands of disadvantaged people were experiencing. At the same time, Bunin not only paints a harsh picture of reality, he reveals the personalities of the people who were the key figures in this picture.

Therefore, the story “The Village” is considered, first of all, psychological novel, since Bunin pays a lot of attention to deep portraits of people, their feelings, experiences, thoughts.

In portraying this most skillfully, Bunin is helped by his artistic expressiveness, which is also contained in his rustic lyrics dedicated to the beauty of nature and the amazing sensations that it evokes in humans.

The life and daily existence of the peasants, carefully described by Bunin, and the images of people shown in detail testify to the main idea of the story.

The writer’s goal is not just to show reality realistically, but also to lead the reader to a logical thought about the future of the Russian people and, in particular, about the fate of the Russian village and those people who devote their whole lives to it.

And it is here that the lyricism so close to Bunin manifests itself, it sounds softly in the tonality of the entire narrative, in those amazing paintings nature, to which the writer pays so much attention, in the bright and complex feelings of the characters and their heartfelt words.

The two main characters of the story - the Krasov brothers - represent carefully thought-out images, the opposite of which helps the writer to fully paint a picture of reality.

Kuzma, a self-taught poet, is clearly close to Bunin’s personality; in his actions and thoughts one can feel the writer’s personal attitude to what is happening and his assessment.

Using the example of Kuzma, the author shows the features of the new national psyche; Kuzma himself thinks that the Russian people are lazy and wild, that the reasons for such a cruel life of the peasants lie not only in difficult circumstances, but also in their own ideas and psychology.

In contrast to the self-taught poet, Bunin makes the image of his brother Tikhon selfish and calculating. Gradually, he increases his capital, and on his path to prosperity and power, he stops at nothing.

But despite the path he has chosen, he still feels an emptiness and despair that is directly related to the future of his homeland, which paints pictures of an even more destructive revolution.

Using the example of the main and secondary characters, Bunin reveals to readers those acute social contradictions, in which Russian reality lies.

Those who are village “rebels” are stupid and empty people who grew up in lack of culture and rudeness, and their protest is just a ridiculous attempt to change something. But they are unable to change their own consciousness and psychology, the core of which still remains inertia and hopelessness.

The psychological story “The Village” by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is recognized as one of the most outstanding and truthful works of Russian literature of the 20th century.

It is in this story that the writer begins to reveal his talent as a realistic prose writer, while the variety of his artistic techniques for depicting the simple peasant life of Russia closely resonates with the themes and artistic expressiveness of his lyrics.

The main “Village” is a sober, merciless realism in its truth, with the help of which Bunin reveals to his readers a full-fledged picture of peasant life.

Bibliography

1. Chalmaev V.A., Zinin S.A. Russian literature of the twentieth century.: Textbook for grade 11: In 2 hours - 5th ed. – M.: LLC 2TID “Russian Word - RS”, 2008.

2. Agenosov V.V. . Russian literature of the 20th century. Toolkit M. “Bustard”, 2002

3. Russian literature of the 20th century. Textbook for applicants to universities M. academic-scientific. Center "Moscow Lyceum", 1995.

4. Wiktionary.

additional literature

Publications by I. Bunin: Collection. op. in 9 vols. M., 1965–1967; Collection op. in 6 vols. M., 1996–1997; Literature “Russian writers in Moscow”. Collection. Reprint. Comp. L. P. Bykovtseva. M., 1977, 860s “Russian writers. Bio-bibliographic dictionary.” M., 1990

Essays on Russian literature of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. State Publishing House of Fiction. M., 1952

I. A. Bunin. “Stories”. M., 1955 I. A. Bunin. “Antonov apples. Novels and stories” Children's literature. M., 1981 “History of Russian literature of the late 19th – early 20th centuries” graduate School. M., 1984

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